


All the World's a Stage

by Mireille



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-08-02
Updated: 2004-08-02
Packaged: 2018-08-16 11:29:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8100751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mireille/pseuds/Mireille
Summary: Wesley's not always sure where the image ends and he begins





	

When Wesley had first been fired from the Council and had decided to become a "rogue demon hunter," he'd adopted the black-leather-and-motorcycle look because he thought it suited the role. 

It hadn't suited *him*, not really. The leather trousers had chafed, and while he liked the motorcycle, he always felt just a little bit ridiculous on it. And even while he'd given everyone the speech about him being a lone wolf, dangerous and desperate and whatever nonsense he thought up that day, he'd known he was just play-acting, that he was no more this solitary man of action than he'd been Hamlet when they'd done Shakespeare at school. 

He was Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, and while he wasn't quite sure who that was, it was certainly not the dashing and mysterious figure he'd tried to convince the world that he was. 

He'd actually done slightly better at trying to convince people that he was *Angel*, for god's sake, and Angel wasn't even human. It had seemed that trying to make himself, to make Wesley, into something other than what he was--failed Watcher and utter prat--was impossible. 

It had even seemed that he was starting to come to terms with that. 

But then everything had changed in a heartbeat, in the flash of silver from Justine's knife at his throat, and suddenly, Wesley found himself living someone else's life. 

The life of a man who routinely made deals for sophisticated weaponry. Who kept a hostage locked in a cell built into his closet. Who spent his nights with a woman he might well have hated--but a woman like *Lilah,* who never would have looked twice at him just a few short years ago; she'd have dismissed him as a caricature of an overeducated Englishman and left it at that. 

That wasn't who Wesley Wyndam-Pryce was. This was who he'd been *trying* to be, back in the "rogue demon hunter" days, but he'd never actually *been* this man. It had always been a role he'd played, and played poorly, at that. 

But now it seemed it actually was him, that this wasn't just a facade he presented to the world. He had this man's instincts, his ruthlessness, his skills. He had, in short, everything he'd so desperately sought a few years ago when everything else he'd ever had seemed to have abandoned him. 

Now it seemed that he had managed, somehow, to make himself into the man he'd always dreamed of being. To have the work and the danger and the excitement that he'd always secretly longed for, even while he'd been honing his skills in translation rather than in fighting. 

Now it seemed that the over-eager, earnest young man in the unflattering suit had been the part he'd been playing; this new life seemed that natural to him. 

And that raised the question that kept him awake, sometimes, in the middle of the night--when it wasn't nightmares or guilt or Lilah keeping him from sleep instead: if that had been only a role, when he'd believed it to be what he truly was, how could he be certain that this wasn't, as well?

There was no way of knowing, of course. He just had to hope that it was, because *this* man was hardened enough that he could cope with everything that happened in the past few years, and the man he'd been before would care, and therefore wouldn't be able to.


End file.
